French identity debate is getting out of control

[pampango]

Source: NRC Handelsblad

The French government has successfully instigated a national debate on the French identity, but it is escalating into a free-for-all. Every night, sitting in his home in the Breton town of Saint-Malo, Marc Le Blevec (48) turns on his television set only to be confronted with the same old thing: the national debate on French identity. He finds the ubiquity of the subject “threatening”, Le Blevec said. “Since president Sarkozy started this, the media have gone into a frenzy. It is making people aggressive.”

His own identity defies categorisation. The sturdily built former soldier summed up his varying backgrounds: his father hailed from Brittany, a region on France’s north-western Atlantic coast. His mother is from the Antilles. He was raised a Catholic but converted to Islam a year ago. Next year he will be marrying a Moroccan. “I am afraid this debate is supposed to determine who the good French are.”

While the national identity debate may be painful for the French, it is definitely self-inflicted. Its roots lie in the 2002 presidential elections, when nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen, convicted of racism and anti-Semitism in the past, made it into the run-off, only to lose to incumbent president Jaques Chirac. Nicolas Sarkozy won the presidential elections five years later by promising to bolster national identity. “I do not want to give extreme-right forces a monopoly over French nationhood,” Sarkozy said, drawing on the lessons learnt from 2002.

Sarkozy formed a Ministry for National Identity, Integration and Immigration shortly after he was elected. The opposition sees every debate on national identity as a thinly veiled attempt by the government to steal voters from Le Pen. One socialist, Jean Christophe Cambalédis, even went as far as to draw an analogy between France’s wartime puppet regime and the current government. But according to Slama, himself a right-leaning liberal, there are deeper issues at stake. France is slowly turning its back on the historic way the French have dealt with identities: by leaving them a private matter, he said



Read more: http://www.nrc.nl/international/article2443227.ece/French_identity_debate_is_getting_out_of_control

---

Sounds like the French are having a very animated discussion about what it means to be French.

Interesting to me that the graphic indicates that only 5% of the French think that "nationality" is what connects people the most. I had thought that French were much more nationalistic than that.

[No Elephants]

1. This just in: The world is not like it was 200 years ago and probably will continue to change.

[pampango]

5. I think the French, if not Sarkozy, realize that more than we give them credit for.

Sure they have a far right that is quite noisy about immigration, but that pie chart indicates they are not as nationalist as I have always type cast them as being.

[Selatius]

2. Sarkozy would rather people fight over identity politics than over economic issues.

On economic issues, the conservatives generally get their asses kicked up and down the street. In France, they also get pavement stones thrown at them as a bonus. This play by Sarkozy simply reminds me of Republicans whenever they use abortion, guns, and "family values" as a means to split an electorate that has, in the past, been generally supportive of pro-working class social programs. FDR was popular precisely because he cut his political career fighting the right kind of political battles: The battles that supported the New Deal programs.

The only difference is the French far right can paint poor people as extremist Islamic fundamentalists who hate all that France is about and want to dismantle the state instead of just poor dead beats who would rather live on welfare than get a job. This way, they can convince the French populace more easily into giving up France's generous social safety nets the same way Americans willingly gave up the Depression-era Aid to Families with Dependent Children Program under Clinton's "welfare reform."

[baldguy]

3. Taking lessons from the GOP?

[Blue_Tires]

4. exactly...

it's a diversionary political football of endless debate designed to distract...every few years the GOP brings up such non-issues like flag burning, English as the 'official' language, the pledge of allegiance, etc...

[pampango]

6. Public debate on immigration turns out to be very French affair-National Front protests immigration

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/1223/1224261160276.html

"After an hour devoted to hearing about the evolution of national identity as a theoretical concept, Xavier Codderens, a local National Front councillor, stood up at the back of the hall and stopped a speaker in his tracks."

"“Why are we having this debate? Because we have a problem with immigration. . . We’ve been speaking for an hour and nobody has said the word immigration . . . The problem is Islam, because Islam has not been asked to integrate itself into democratic society.”

A Jewish representative immediately rose to his feet to protest, followed by a suited man in the front row. “I’m Muslim, French and proud to be French,” he shouted. “My father came to defend Alsace. Around France, there are hundreds of cemeteries full of Muslims who died for France.

A communist with a pencil moustache said France should learn to respect multiple identities."